One of the most interesting technologies behind the Vault Networks connection to the backbone internet carriers of the Americas is BGP routing, which we use to optimize your connection while you run your server. The technology behind the scenes gets complicated fast, but the general idea is easy to follow, which is what we will cover today.
How BGP Routing Works
BGP routing enables the exchange of routing information between gateway hosts, each a unique router, across a network of autonomous systems, or routing domains. It relies on a routing table connecting to every known router, the addresses they reach, and the quality of the path to each one, so the connection you get has the best possible latency and stability.
In practical terms, say your BGP network includes your router and four others spread across the country, in California, Michigan, Texas, and Florida. If you wanted to connect to a server in California from Florida, BGP routing would map the fastest route, which would run through Texas rather than Michigan, since Michigan sits out of the way for that particular connection. If something goes wrong with the router in Texas and Michigan becomes the only path left, BGP routing sends traffic that way instead, rather than returning an error.
Why BGP Routing Matters to Your Uptime
This is a simplified overview of BGP technology, and a lot more happens behind the scenes at a technical level to make the connection work. At an enterprise level like ours, BGP routing lets us communicate with multiple ISPs and use them to find the best possible path from point A to point B, wherever each sits on the internet or in the physical world.
BGP routing is a major part of what keeps the Vault Networks network stable, fast, and available. Since our protocols can reroute traffic on the fly the moment an outage is detected, downtime usually shrinks to a fraction of a second, often unnoticeable to the end user.
To learn more about our network, call us at (305) 735-8098, option 2, or send us an email at sales@vaultnetworks.com.
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